Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Auriga (Aur)  ·  Contains:  LBN 809  ·  PK173-05.1
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K2-1, Peter Goodhew
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K2-1, Peter Goodhew
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Description

A very faint and obscure planetary nebula some 3700 light years away in the constellation Auriga.
Initially catalogued as a planetary nebula, was later thought to be misclassified and considered to be either a reflection nebula (LBN 809), an H-II region, and even a galaxy (PGC 16765). However it has recently been rediscovered as a genuine planetary nebula. It has a size of 115x126 arc seconds and is predominantly OIII. The weaker Ha signal has a similar form to the OIII signal.  However there's an odd small area of red nebulosity at the top left-hand corner.  This is possibly some NII emission which would be captured by the 5nm bandwith of my Ha filter (the spectrum shows that NII is present).
Discovered by Czech astronomer Dr. Luboš Kohoutek in 1962 by visually examining the National Geographic Society-Palomar Observatory Sky Survey prints at the Astronomical Institute in Prague, Czech Republic (https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1963BAICz..14...70K/abstract).
It has a mean surface brightness of 24.1 mag/arc sec.

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K2-1, Peter Goodhew

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Planetary Nebulae